Dragon's Teeth

by Sinclair, Upton;

  VII

  The door to the street opened, and there entered a tall, vigorous-appearing American of thirty-five or so, having red hair and a cheerful smile: Lanny’s one-time tutor and dependable friend, Jerry Pendleton from the state of Kansas, now proprietor of a tourist bureau in Cannes. Beauty had phoned to him: “Do go over there and stop his worrying.” Jerry was the fellow for the job, because he had been through this himself, and had three sturdy youngsters and a cheerful little. French wife as evidence that la nature wasn’t altogether out of her wits. Jerry knew exactly how to kid his friend along and make him take it; he seated himself in the next chair and commanded: “Cheer up! This isn’t the Meuse-Argonne!”

  Yes, ex-Lieutenant Jerry Pendleton, who had enlisted and begun as a machine-gun expert, knew plenty about blood and suffering. Mostly he didn’t talk about it; but once on a long motor ride, and again sitting out in the boat when the fish didn’t happen to be biting, he had opened up and told a little of what he had seen. The worst of it was that the men who had suffered and died hadn’t accomplished anything, so far as a survivor could see; France had been saved, but wasn’t making much use of her victory, nor was any other nation. This battle that Irma was fighting in the other room was of a more profitable kind; she’d have a little something for her pains, and Lanny for his—so said the former doughboy, with a grin.

  More than once Lanny had been glad to lean on this sturdy fellow. That dreadful time when Marcel Detaze had leaped from a stationary balloon in flames it had been Jerry who had driven Lanny and his mother up to the war zone and helped to bring the broken man home and nurse him back to life. So now when he chuckled and said: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Lanny recognized the old doughboy spirit.

  The tourist agent had troubles of his own at present. He mentioned how fast business was falling off, how many Americans hadn’t come to the Riviera that season. Apparently the hard times were going to spread to Europe. Did Lanny think so? Lanny said he surely did, and told how he had argued the matter with his father. Maybe the money values which had been wiped out in Wall Street were just paper, as so many declared; but it was paper that you had been able to spend for anything you wanted, including steamship tickets and traveler’s checks. Now you didn’t have it, so you didn’t spend it. Lanny and his wife could have named a score of people who had braved the snow and sleet of New York the past winter and were glad if they had the price of meal tickets.

  Jerry said he’d been hard up more than once, and could stand it again. He’d have to let his office force go, and he and Cerise would do the work. Fortunately they had their meal tickets, for they still lived in the Pension Flavin, owned and run by the wife’s mother and aunt. “You’ll have to take me fishing some more and let me carry home the fish,” said the ex-tutor; and Lanny replied: “Just as soon as I know Irma’s all right, we’ll make a date.” The moment he said this his heart gave a jump. Was he ever going to know that Irma was all right? Suppose her heart was failing at this moment, and the nurses were frantically trying to restore it!

  VIII

  The surgeon arrived at last: a middle-aged Englishman, smooth-shaven, alert, and precise; his cheeks were rosy from a “workout” in the sunshine followed by a showerbath. He had talked with the head nurse over the telephone; everything was going excellently. Lanny could understand that a surgeon has to take his job serenely; he cannot suffer with all his patients; whatever others may do, he has to accept la nature and her ways. He said he would see Mrs. Budd and report.

  Lanny and his friend resumed their discussion of depressions and their cause. Lanny had a head full of theories, derived from the Red and Pink papers he took. Jerry’s reading was confined mostly to the Saturday Evening Post and the Paris edition of the New York Tribune; therefore he was puzzled, and couldn’t figure out what had become of all the money that people had had early in October 1929, and where it had gone by the end of that month. Lanny explained the credit structure: one of those toy balloons, shining brightly in the sunshine, dancing merrily in the breeze, until someone sticks a pin into it. Jerry said: “By heck, I ought to study up on those things!”

  The surgeon reappeared, as offensively cheerful as ever. Mrs. Budd was a patient to be proud of; she was just the way a young woman ought to keep herself. The “bearing-down pains,” as they were called, might continue for some little time yet. Meanwhile there was nothing to be done. Lanny was dismayed, but knew there was no use exhibiting his feelings; he too must maintain the professional manner. “I’ll be within call,” said the surgeon. “You might as well get it off your mind for a while.” Lanny thanked him.

  After the surgeon had gone, Jerry said: “When do we eat?” Lanny wanted to say that he couldn’t eat, but he knew that Jerry was there for the purpose of making him change his mind. It was dinner-hour at the Pension Flavin, and Jerry recited a jingle to the effect that he knew a boarding-house not far away where they had ham and eggs three times a day. “Oh, how those boarders yell when they hear the dinner-bell!”—and so on. This was the sporting way to deal with the fact that your mother-in-law runs a medium-priced pension in the most fashionable of Riviera towns. Lanny knew also that he hadn’t visited the Pendleton family for some time, and that, having won the biggest matrimonial sweepstakes, it was up to him to show that he didn’t mean to “high-hat” his poor friends.

  “All right,” he said; “but I’ll be glum company.”

  “The boarders know all about it,” responded Jerry.

  Indeed they did! Wherever the boarders came from and whatever they were, they knew about the Budd family and felt themselves members of it. For sixteen years Jerry Pendleton had been going fishing with Lanny Budd, and the boarders had eaten the fish. At the outset Jerry had been a boarder like themselves, but after he had driven the Boches out of France he had married the daughter of the pension. And then had come the time when another of the boarders had married Lanny’s mother; from that time on, the boarders had all regarded themselves as Budds, and entitled to every scrap of gossip concerning the family.

  IX

  Driving back to the hospital, Lanny took the precaution to stop and purchase several magazines, French, English, and American. He would equip himself for a siege, and if one subject failed to hold his attention he would try others. Arriving at the reception-room, he found that he was no longer alone; in one of the chairs sat a French gentleman, stoutish and prosperous, betraying in aspect and manner those symptoms which Lanny recognized.

  The stranger’s misery loved company, and he introduced himself as an avocat from a near-by town. It was his wife’s first accouchement, and he was in a terrible state of fidgets and could hardly keep his seat; he wanted to bother the nurses with questions every time one entered the room. He seemed to Lanny absurdly naïve; he actually didn’t know about the “bearing-down pains,” that they were according to the arrangements of la nature, and that women didn’t very often die of them. Speaking as a veteran of some ten hours, Lanny explained about the stretching of tissues, and comforted the stranger as best he could. Later on, seeing that his advice was without effect, Lanny became bored, and buried himself in the latest issue of the New Statesman.

  He would have liked very much to inquire whether there had been any change in the status of his wife; but the egregious emotionalism of Monsieur Fouchard reminded him that the Budds were stern Anglo-Saxons and should behave accordingly. He resolutely fixed his attention upon an article dealing with the final reparations settlement of the World War, now more than eleven years in the past, and the probable effects of that settlement upon the various nations involved. This was a subject of interest to a young man who had been born in Switzerland of American parents and had lived chunks of his life in France, Germany, England, and “the States.” His many friends in these countries belonged to the ruling classes and took political and economic developments as their personal affairs.

  The surgeon was a long time in returning, and Lanny began once more to feel himself a defrauded clie
nt. He forgot that there are telephones, whereby an obstetrician can keep informed as to his patient while reading the latest medical journal at home or playing a game of billiards at his club. When the Englishman at last appeared, he informed the anxious husband that the time for action was approaching, and that Mrs. Budd would soon be taken to the delivery-room. After that Lanny found it impossible to interest himself in what L’Illustration had to report about the prospects for the spring Salons—important though this subject was to one who earned his living by buying or selling works of art on commission.

  There was no use trying to be Anglo-Saxon any longer. Better give up and admit the hegemony of mother nature. Lanny put down his magazine and watched Monsieur Fouchard pacing the floor of the reception-room, and when Monsieur Fouchard sat down and lighted a cigarette, Lanny got up and did the pacing. Meanwhile they talked. The Frenchman told about his wife; she was only nineteen, her charms were extraordinary, and Monsieur Fouchard spared no details in describing them. He wanted to tell the whole story of their courtship and marriage, and was grateful to a stranger for listening.

  Lanny didn’t tell so much; nor was it necessary. Monsieur Fouchard had heard the surgeon call him by name, and was aware who this elegant young American must be. He had read about Irma Barnes, and began to talk as if he were an old friend of the family, indeed as if he were about to take charge of Irma’s convalescence and the nursing of her infant. Lanny, who had grown up in France, knew that it wasn’t worth while to take offense; much better to be human. They would set up a sort of temporary association, a League of Husbands in Labor. Others might be joining them before the night was over.

  X

  The accoucheuse of Madame Fouchard arrived, a Frenchwoman; she succeeded in persuading the husband that it would be a long time before the blessed event could take place, so that gentleman bade his fellow league-member a sentimental farewell. Lanny answered a call from his mother and reported on the situation; after pacing the floor some more, he sat down and tried to put his mind upon an account of a visit to the hanging monasteries of Greece. He had seen them as a boy, but now wouldn’t have cared if all the monks had been hanged along with the monasteries. He simply couldn’t believe that a normal delivery could take so long a time. He rang the bell and had a session with the night head nurse, only to find that she had learned the formulas. “Tout va bien, monsieur. Soyez tranquille.”

  Lanny was really glad when the door opened and a lady was escorted in, obviously in that condition in which ladies enter such places. With her came a French gentleman with a dark brown silky beard; Lanny recognized him as a piano-teacher well known in Cannes. The lady was turned over to the nurse’s care, and the gentleman became at once a member of Lanny’s league. Inasmuch as Lanny was a pianist himself, and had a brother-in-law who was a violin virtuoso, the two might have talked a lot of shop; but no, they preferred to tell each other how long they had been married, and how old their wives were, and how they felt and how their wives felt. This confrontation with nature in the raw had reduced them to the lowest common denominator of humanity. Art, science, and culture no longer existed; only bodies, blood, and babies.

  Lanny would listen for a while, and then he would cease to hear what the bearded Frenchman was saying. Lanny was walking up and down the floor of the reception-room, with beads of perspiration standing out upon his forehead. Oh, God, this surely couldn’t be right! Something dreadful must be happening in that delivery-room, some of those things which the encyclopedia told about: a failure of the mother’s heart, the breaking of the “waters,” or one of those irregular presentations which occur in varying percentages of cases. Manifestly, if the accoucheur had encountered trouble, he wouldn’t come running out to tell the expectant father; he’d be busy, and so would the nurses. Only when it was all over would anyone break the tragic news; and then Lanny would never be able to forgive himself.

  A serious defect in the practical arrangements of this hospice de la misère! There ought to be some system, a telephone in the delivery-room, a bulletin board, a set of signals! It is a problem which calls for collective solution; the opening of a paternity hospital, a place for expectant fathers, where they may receive proper care! Nurses will have some time for them. Attendants will consider their feelings, and give them information—perhaps lectures on the subject of obstetrics, especially prepared for sensitive minds, with the abnormalities omitted or played down. There will be soft music, perhaps motion pictures; above all there will be news, plenty of it, prompt and dependable. Perhaps a place like a broker’s office, where a “Translux” gives the market figures on a screen.

  Every time Lanny came near the wall with the bell-button he wanted to press it and demand exact information as to the condition of his beloved wife. Every time the French music-teacher asked him a question it was harder to conceal the fact that he wasn’t listening. A damnable thing! Put the blame wherever you chose, on nature or on human incompetence, the fact remained that this wife whom he loved so tenderly, with so much pity, must be in agony, she must be completely exhausted. Something ought to be done! Here it was getting on toward midnight—Lanny looked at his wristwatch and saw that three minutes had passed since he had looked the last time; it was only twenty-two minutes to eleven—but that was bad enough—some thirteen hours since the labor pains had begun, and they had told him it was time to leave her to her fate. Damn it—

  XI

  A door of the room opened, and there was a nurse. Lanny took one glance, and saw that she was different from any nurse he had seen thus far. She was smiling, yes, actually beaming with smiles. “Oh, monsieur!” she exclaimed. “C’est une fille! Une très belle fille! Si charmante!” She made a gesture, indicating the size of a female prodigy. Lanny found himself going suddenly dizzy, and reached for a chair.

  “Et madame?” he cried.

  “Madame est si brave! Elle est magnifique! Tout va bien.” The formula again. Lanny poured out questions, and satisfied himself that Irma was going to survive. She was exhausted, but that was to be expected. There were details to be attended to; in half an hour or so it should be possible for monsieur to see both mother and daughter. “Tout de suite! Soyez tranquille!”

  The teacher of piano had Lanny Budd by the hand and was shaking it vigorously. For some time after the American had resumed his seat the other was still pouring out congratulations. “Merci, merci,” Lanny said mechanically, meanwhile thinking: “A girl! Beauty will be disappointed.” But he himself had no complaint. He had been a ladies’ man from childhood, seeing his father only at long intervals, cared for by his mother and by women servants. There had been his mother’s women friends, then his half-sister and his stepmother in New England, then a new half-sister at Bienvenu, then a succession of his sweethearts, and last of all his wife. He had got something from them all, and would find a daughter no end of fun. It was all right.

  Lanny got up, excused himself from the French gentleman, and went to the telephone. He called his mother and told her the news. Yes, he said, he was delighted, or would be when he got over being woozy. No, he wouldn’t forget the various cablegrams: one to his father in Connecticut, one to Irma’s mother on Long Island, one to his half-sister Bess in Berlin. Beauty would do the telephoning to various friends in the neighborhood—trust her not to miss those thrills! Lanny would include his friend Rick in England and his friend Kurt in Germany; he had the messages written, save for filling in the word “girl.”

  He carried out his promise to Pietro Corsatti. It was still early in New York; the story would make the night edition of the morning papers, that which was read by café society, whose darling Irma Barnes had been. After receiving Pete’s congratulations, Lanny went back for others which the French gentleman had thought up. Astonishing how suddenly the black clouds had lifted from the sky of a young husband’s life, how less murderous the ways of mother nature appeared! It became possible to chat with a piano-teacher about the technique he employed; to tell one’s own experiences with the Les
chetizsky method, and later with the Breithaupt; to explain the forearm rotary motion, and illustrate it on the arm of one’s chair. Lanny found himself tapping out the opening theme of Liszt’s symphonic poem, From the Cradle to the Grave. But he stopped with the first part.

  XII

  The cheerful nurse came again, and escorted the successful father down a passage to a large expanse of plate-glass looking into a room with tiny white metal cribs. Visitors were not permitted inside, but a nurse with a white mask over her mouth and nose brought to the other side of the glass a bundle in a blanket and laid back the folds, exposing to Lanny’s gaze a brick-red object which might have been a great bloated crinkled caterpillar, only it had appendages, and a large round ball at the top with a face which would have been human if it hadn’t been elfish. There was a mouth with lips busily sucking on nothing, and a pair of large eyes which didn’t move; however, the nurse at Lanny’s side assured him that they had been tested with a light, and they worked. He was assured that this was his baby; to prove it there was a tiny necklace with a metal tag; monsieur and madame might rest assured that they would not carry home the baby of an avocat, nor yet that of a teacher of piano technique.

  The bloated red caterpillar was folded up in the blanket again, and Lanny was escorted to Irma’s room. She lay in a white hospital bed, her head sunk back in a pillow, her eyes closed. How pale she looked, how different from the rich brunette beauty he had left that morning! Now her dark hair was disordered—apparently they hadn’t wished to disturb her even that much. Lanny tiptoed into the room, and she opened her eyes slowly, as if with an effort; when she recognized him she gave him a feeble smile.